Justices reject appeal from imprisoned Chinese billionaire
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from a Chinese billionaire who was convicted of bribing United Nations officials to buy their support for a proposed U.N. center in Macau that was never built.
The justices did not comment, leaving in place the bribery conviction of Ng Lap Seng, one of China's richest men. The 71-year-old Ng is serving a federal prison sentence.
Prosecutors persuaded jurors at Ng's 2017 trial in New York that he paid more than $1.7 million in bribes in an effort to build a center to serve struggling Southern Hemisphere nations.
Paul Clement, Ng's Supreme Court lawyer, argued that his client was seeking formal support for a center he intended to build for free. "The object of this alleged bribery was not to funnel UN funds to petitioner, but very nearly the opposite," Clement wrote.
Supreme Court declines to hear border wall challenge
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that rejected environmental groups' challenge to sections of wall the Trump administration is building along the U.S. border with Mexico.
The high court on Monday declined to hear an appeal involving construction of 145 miles (233 kilometers) of steel-bollard walls along the border in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.
The Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Southwest Environmental Center had challenged a federal law that allows the secretary of Homeland Security to waive any laws necessary to allow the quick construction of border fencing. The groups had argued that violates the Constitution's separation of powers. But a lower court dismissed the case.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on border wall construction during the Trump administration. Last year, the high court gave the administration the go-ahead to tap billions of dollars in Pentagon funds to replace barriers along the border with Mexico in Arizona, California and New Mexico with more robust fencing.
Court upholds prostitution pledge for AIDS funding
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has upheld a provision of federal law that requires foreign affiliates of U.S.-based health organizations to denounce prostitution as a condition of receiving taxpayer money to fight AIDS around the world.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 on Monday. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court's conservatives that "plaintiffs' foreign affiliates are foreign organizations, and foreign organizations operating abroad possess no rights under the U. S. Constitution."
Justice Elena Kagan sat out the case, presumably because she worked on an earlier version of it when she served in the Justice Department before joining the court.
The case was the second time the justices weighed in on a federal program that has spent nearly $80 billion to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The court ruled in 2013 that the anti-prostitution pledge, contained in a 2003 law, improperly restricts the U.S. groups' constitutional rights. The new question, when the case was argued by telephone because of the coronavirus in May, was whether the administration can subject the foreign organizations to the pledge.
The case is USAID v. Alliance for Open Society International Inc., 19-177.
High Court makes it easier for president to remove CFPB head
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for the president to fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The justices struck down restrictions Congress had written on when the president can remove the bureau's director.
"The agency may ... continue to operate, but its Director, in light of our decision, must be removable by the President at will," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
The court's five conservative justices agreed that restrictions Congress imposed on when the president can fire the agency's director violated the Constitution. But they disagreed on what to do as a result.
Roberts and fellow conservative justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh said the restrictions could be stricken from the law. The court's four liberals agreed, though they disagreed the restrictions were improper.
The decision doesn't have a big impact on the current head of the agency. Kathy Kraninger, who was nominated to her current post by the president in 2018, had said she believed the president could fire her at any time.
Under the Dodd-Frank Act that created the agency in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB's director is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term. The law had said the president could only remove a director for "inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office." That structure could leave a new president with a director chosen by the previous president for some or all of the new president's time in office. The Trump administration had argued that the restrictions improperly limit the power of the president.
"We hold that the CFPB's leadership by a single individual removable only for inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance violates the separation of powers," Roberts wrote.
Defenders of the law's removal provision had argued the restrictions insulated the agency's head from presidential pressure.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for herself and three liberal colleagues, called the majority opinion simplistic.
"What does the Constitution say about the separation of powers—and particularly about the President's removal authority? (Spoiler alert: about the latter, nothing at all.) The majority offers the civics class version of separation of powers—call it the Schoolhouse Rock definition of the phrase," she said, referencing the educational, animated short films.
"Today's decision wipes out a feature of that agency its creators thought fundamental to its mission—a measure of independence from political pressure. I respectfully dissent," Kagan wrote.
The CFPB was the brainchild of Massachusetts senator and former Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.
After the ruling, Warren wrote in a series of tweets that the Supreme Court had "handed over more power to Wall Street's army of lawyers and lobbyists to push out a director who fights for the American people." But, she said that even after the ruling the CFPB is "still an independent agency."
"The director of that agency still works for the American people. Not Donald Trump. Not Congress. Not the banking industry. Nothing in the Supreme Court ruling changes that," Warren wrote.
The case is Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 19-7.
